Pawns in Mental State should still satisfy their basic needs

[PetWolverine]

I was just thinking about my own personal experience.

At the worst of times, I never cared if I had ate, or what physical pain I was had. I couldn't feel it. I think a mental break is like that, you don't really feel anything. In Rimworld, pawns shouldn't have any feeling about lack of food, or that "old scar" if they are having a mental break either.

That's another approach. The problem seems to be the combination of "choose not to eat" and "complain about hunger". Most of us are trying to find ways to get rid of the first component, and here's a simple suggestion to remove the second instead.

Basically, if a pawn is wandering around hungry when there's food available, it's because they don't care about their physical needs; but if they don't care, it shouldn't affect their mood. They would probably end the break with roughly the same mood they started with, which is obviously still in break range, but not necessarily zero, making it much more likely for catharsis to prevent another immediate break.

[Limdood]

I feel that any reduced-risk method to deal with mental breaks makes them unnecessarily easier.  Breaks are punishing and avoidable.  The punishment already contains further ways to mitigate its danger (dazed and wandering in the killbox when a raid notification happens?  go arrest and cross your fingers, or let them die and endeavor to avoid breaks next time).

Players currently put forth monumental effort to AVOID breaks.  They build lavish bases, feed dangerous and addictive drugs.  When unavoidable or acceptable-risk events put someone at risk of a break, i can wall him in (exploity) or restrict him to the deepest parts of my base (so that when he does break, he is least likely to wander into danger). 

If i have failed at preventing both the break and the wander into danger, i can still make one last-ditch effort to arrest, which might turn out ok, or might escalate the situation.  For extreme breaks, i lose options, which is balanced by the fact that extreme breaks trigger the most severe punishments and are most avoidable.

If I manage to have my pawn survive his break - which tends to happen using the above methods, I can mitigate the break-spiral by keeping him from resting while he has low mood (the trick here is to have them eat a good meal, drug if necessary, then sleep for about half an in-game hour, then get them up and set to joy...they need time for their mood bar to rise - which only happens while they're awake.  You sleep just to remove the totally sleep deprived, then work on other mood modifiers).  Alternatively, i can retry step 2: restrict him to the deepest safety of the base and hope he doesn't break again.

Could the mood/break system use some work?  sure, but it is already WONDERFULLY balanced for risk/reward/effort - IN MY OPINION.  This means that, in my opinion, reduced-risk adjustments to the methods for dealing with breaks will trivialize (and i'm using that word very intentionally) the mood/break system. 

In my opinion, i think that the mood/break system needs only 2 minor changes: reduced duration for MINOR breaks (specifically for daze or sad wander, though if one of those breaks is triggered from a major break, the duration is fine), and there should be a cooldown time between breaks, ideally the duration of catharsis (so that there is time for the mood boost of catharsis to take effect - it does seem DESIGNED to prevent the current risk of the endless break cycle), since i shouldn't HAVE to micromanage the pawn's behavior IMMEDIATELY following a break just to let catharsis work the way that it seems to be intended.

My posts reflected my honest opinions, and my words were chosen intentionally to reflect my take on the suggestions.  Disagree all you want (I realize most of the people in this thread already do), but please don't tell me what i think, or define MY INTERPRETATION of trivialization right after you say its a subjective term, or tell me that i'm blowing something out of proportion - I think that it would be a mistake of colossal proportions, vastly reducing the effort i need to bother investing in mood to deal with, if reduced-risk methods of break-management were introduced.

[mumblemumble]

Only real difference between arrests and helping them in a friendly way, is the debuff from being arrested, and perhaps the speed.

.....seems like a fair compromise.

I agree the mood needs rework, but perhaps more in the complexity sides. It doesn't seem like theres any definite cause to people being shitty moods, or breaking, they just "are" and "do". It feels like russian roulette, a little, how you have to keep everyone jolly, or they maybe, just maybe, will go on a flake smoking binge and die, not because they had their lover killed, persay, but just because they felt shitty in general... But I put my thoughts on this in the thread about mental health, and nerve, already.

[PetWolverine]

I don't have a problem with breaks in terms of balance, and I think if any of the suggestions here were implemented there would have to be some countervailing change to keep moods relevant, which could be as simple is increasing the severity or duration of some common negative moodlets.

The things that frustrate me about breaks are that they're sometimes nonsensical, which breaks immersion (e.g. a dazed wanderer collapses from exhaustion in the fridge amid piles of meals, wakes up, goes berserk - last straw: starving), and that they're not very interactive (a pawn does a dazed wander; I make one decision, whether to arrest or not, usually not; and then I ignore them because I can't do anything). Making the break type match the reason better fixes the first issue (e.g. break when hungry -> food binge); offering a peaceful way to deal with breaks fixes the second (is it worth trying to talk them down? who should I use?).

I feel that any reduced-risk method to deal with mental breaks makes them unnecessarily easier.

The goal isn't to make the game easier. The changes suggested here would make the game easier on their own, sure, but nobody's saying "and don't make any compensating changes to make things harder". We're just not discussing those compensating changes, because it's not the topic.

In my opinion, i think that the mood/break system needs only 2 minor changes: reduced duration for MINOR breaks (specifically for daze or sad wander, though if one of those breaks is triggered from a major break, the duration is fine), and there should be a cooldown time between breaks, ideally the duration of catharsis (so that there is time for the mood boost of catharsis to take effect - it does seem DESIGNED to prevent the current risk of the endless break cycle), since i shouldn't HAVE to micromanage the pawn's behavior IMMEDIATELY following a break just to let catharsis work the way that it seems to be intended.

A cooldown would indeed fix the problem of "dazed wanderer has a second break before they've had a chance to eat". This would be hacky and immersion-breaking in its own way, and wouldn't make them more interactive. Making the breaks shorter seems purely like a way to make them easier to endure, not more immersive or interactive. Also, according to the wiki (http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Mood), there already is a distinction between the minor break type "Sad wander" (mean time to recovery: 0.3 days) and the major break type "Psychotic wander (daze)" (mean time to recovery: 0.8 days).